Woman saves dozens of dogs from kill shelters, puppy mills

Amy Hunt, of Elyria, runs a Jack Russell terrier dog rescue for animals who have not been adopted from city and county kennels and are to be euthanized. She picks the dogs up from around the state or they are delivered by other dog rescuers to her family homestead in Carlisle Township called Crazy W Farm. Caring for as many as six Jack Russell terriers at a time can be a handful, but each dog like Woodstock, pictured above, receives plenty of attention, while the other 19 dogs are placed in foster homes until Hunt can find suitable homes.
MORNING JOURNAL/NATE PARSONS

CARLISLE TOWNSHIP -- When Amy Hunt comes home from work each day, she's greeted by six, or sometimes more, of her closest friends. They all stick by her side, sometimes literally, while the others follow her around her farm, hungry for attention.

Hunt, 32, is the face behind a dog rescue operation out of Carlisle Township, and in the last five years she's saved more than 500 dogs -- mostly Jack Russell terriers -- from kill shelters around the state. She also owns two donkeys, a half-dozen chickens, three of her own dogs and boards horses.

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"All my dogs come from kill shelters on the day they are to be euthanized," Hunt said. "And I take what other rescues won't. If I didn't, they'd die."

Hunt has been around animals since she was little and her parents owned the farm where she now lives with her husband, Tyler. She has worked at American Greetings in Cleveland as a recruiter for the last five years.

The whole reason she started a rescue came after an incident in a New Jersey pet store.

"I always wanted a Jack Russell, and I saw this little puppy with her butt sticking out of her food bowl in a pet store," Hunt said. "Then I found out that she came from the worst puppy mill in Missouri. I started thinking, where are her parents? Does she have siblings? I started getting more involved with rescuing them then and there."

"I'm never going to save them all," Hunt said. "But If you can educate people about puppy mills and stuff like that, it helps."

Each night she plays with the dogs outside, gives them baths, feeds them and makes sure they're healthy. Six dogs shower her with kisses as she kneels on the ground.

"You just had to roll in donkey doo, didn't you?" she said to a dog as she looked it in the face. "We can't have you smelling like that."

Hunt keeps the dogs that are not people-friendly or are too sick to live with a family. But for the most part, all her Jack Russells are adopted quickly.

"I plan on keeping this up for the rest of my life," Hunt said. "I'm either finding people jobs (at American Greetings) or finding people to adopt dogs."

Some of the dogs that come her way come from puppy mills. She recalls one dog that was in particularly bad shape.

"She wasn't having enough babies to make the owner money," Hunt said. "When I got her, she didn't know what grass was. Mill dogs take special people to adopt them."

How many dogs Hunt has for adoption at one time depends on the time of year.

"We get the largest influx after the Fourth of July because they run away when they hear fireworks," Hunt said. "Then after school starts, parents dump them because they don't have time to take care of them. In May and April, we get a lot of Christmas puppies."

In order to adopt a dog, potential owners have to go through an interview process. Hunt visits the home to make sure it will be a safe environment for the dog and to see if it's a good fit.

"Some people get mad when I deny them, but most people understand," Hunt said.